I am wondering what a 21 MB pcb file contains. This file does not contain the bloated 3D models
A64-OlinuXino_Rev_C is a PCB use for “benchmarking” and it’s only 1.1MiB.
“Boatcontrol” is a much bigger PCB (535*305mm 4 layers) and it is 8.7MiB. It is also on the made-with-kicad list.
I did some short tests with boatcontrol. The initial load of the PCB takes about 5s, and after that it’s just like any other project. Not laggy at all. My PC has an AMD 5600G with a Passmark rating of around 20000. It’s not a slouch, but not particularly fast either.
What does this mean:
Is that the same as “Fallback graphics” (and “Accelerated graphics”)?
If Fallback graphics is quicker then Accelerated graphics then you do have a video driver problem.
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CIAA-ACC (HPC) (Also on Made with kicad | KiCad EDA) It’s 93*90mm PCB, but 12 layers and quite “full” File size of the PCB is 15.3MiB
Direct link:
It’s a quite complex project, the PCB itself is in: Hardware/PCB/ACC/CIAA_ACC/ciaa_acc.kicad_pro
It seems to respond even a bit quicker then boatcontrol. No performance issues at all. A PCB like this is also already far more complex then I would ever dream to make myself.
It’s just that large if all the planes are poured. I assume it’s because i have alot of via stitching complicating the geometry
Yes Fallback graphics performs much better. Tried the project with accelerated graphcs on my slightly crusty laptop with integrated graphics and it runs far better than on my main machine with accelerated graphics.
Allright it seems to be a graphics driver issue.
I remember having problems before and switching from radeon to amdgpu.
My R9 270X is a 11 Year old card with only “experimental support” in amdgpu. The older
radeon driver brings no improvement and i vaguely remember switching to amdgpu because
of some kicad issue.
I will just buy a new card. Thank you all, i will report if it fixes the issue!
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Is the rest of your PC from that same era?
Maybe it’s time to look a bit closer at the whole thing.
I bought a new PC just after the biggest peak of the virus craze when PC hardware prices were just starting to get lower again, but video cards were still 3x market price if you could buy any at all.
Back then I bought my Ryzen 5600G for EUR240, and now it’s just EUR140, and that is with built in Graphics. You can get a decent MoBo for EUR100 and add some memory, storage and a fresh power supply (reuse the case if it’s standard) and you can have the parts for a new PC for less then EUR400.
5600G is not the fastest processor, but it does have about the best price to performance ratio you can get, and with the integrated graphics it’s even more attractive.
Best source I could find for selecting a new CPU is the XY scatter graph from:
Another option is to buy second hand. Here in the Netherlands there are plenty of companies who sell ex-office equipment. Those are generally well treated, just a few years old and have an abundance of life left in them.
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KiCad can make the OpenGL driver work very hard and expose buggy cards.
The rest is up to date, infact i’m running almost the same cpu as you, the ryzen 5 5600 (without integrated graphics).
The card ive bought now is a 5500 XT used for 60€
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Is this one (30 MB) laggy too? qa/data/pcbnew/vme-wren.kicad_pcb · master · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
If so, I’m afraid you need to upgrade your GPU. Or try another OS.
Tom
Waauw, that one is bigger then mine. 
But I can’t open it. It needs a recent nightly, and Linux mint stopped updating the nightly some months ago (probably a dependency issue)
But it does not really matter, I’m quite sure OP’s problem is caused by a shoddy graphics card or driver.
Cant open the file with Version: 8.99.0-unknown-062db51f24~178~ubuntu24.04.1, release build
i get the error:
Error loading the PCB "vme-wren.kicad_pcb”. Expect ‘net, layer/layers, tstamp, hatch, priority, connect_pads, min_thickness, fill, polygon, filled_polygon, fill_segments, attr, locked, uuid, or name’ in “vme-wren.kicad_pcb”, line 1502883, column 4.
Is that a recent nightly build?
When version numbers are important, always include the full version info from: Help / About / Copy Version Info This info is about 20 lines of text and looks like:
Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64
Version: 8.99.0-unknown-05b2b3c26e~178~ubuntu20.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.2
FreeType 2.10.1
HarfBuzz 2.6.4
FontConfig 2.13.1
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux Mint 20.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, xfce, x11
Build Info:
Date: May 6 2024 18:07:05
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013
Locale:
Lang: en_US
Enc: UTF-8
Num: 1.234,5
As I mentioned before, my Nightly is too old because it stopped updating (apparently on 2024-05-06). I do get another message, just telling me the file version is too new:
Error loading PCB ‘/home/paul/downloads/vme-wren.kicad_pcb’. KiCad was unable to open this file because it was created with a more recent version than the one you are running.
To open it you will need to upgrade KiCad to version 8.99 or later (file format dated 20240706 or later).
If 062db51f24 is the git commit hash (which I think it is), then that version is exactly a month old. That’s a long time in the 8.99 branch - can you try re-opening with a new nightly build please?
I’ts the one my distro (Ubuntu 24.04) gave me when using the nightly ppa. But i’ll test with the new GPU on monday first before i continue iterating
When did yo you last update your PC? ( 062db51f24 suggests shortly after 2024-07-16) Just running regular system updates also updates KiCad-Nightly when it’s installed via a PPA.
Hi Paul,
In case you’re interested, i get regular 8.99 updates on my Mint. This is the latest:
Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64
Version: 8.99.0-unknown-3f2b6f7ae0~180~ubuntu22.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.1
FreeType 2.11.1
HarfBuzz 2.7.4
FontConfig 2.13.1
libcurl/7.81.0 OpenSSL/3.0.2 zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.9 zstd/1.4.8 libidn2/2.3.2 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.3.2) libssh/0.9.6/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.43.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.5.18
Platform: Linux Mint 21.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, cinnamon, x11
Build Info:
Date: Aug 15 2024 22:07:11
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.74.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 7.81.0
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 11.4.0 with C++ ABI 1016
Locale:
Lang: en_AU
Enc: UTF-8
Num: 1,234.5
type or paste code here
Yea so the nightly PPA for ubuntu hasn’t completed successfully for a few weeks. Heh
Allright, got the new GPU and there is no improvement. Infact it seems a little bit worse actually.
Driver works, i can see a big improvement in graphics performance (furmark).
Tried again on my laptop (intel graphics 5500) and performance is smooth as it should be.
So i guess there is something wrong with the amdgpu driver on my machine.
Edit: this person seems to have had the same issue:
also here is my full version info
Application: KiCad PCB Editor x86_64 on x86_64
Version: 8.0.4-8.0.4-0~ubuntu24.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.4
FreeType 2.13.2
HarfBuzz 8.3.0
FontConfig 2.15.0
libcurl/8.5.0 OpenSSL/3.0.13 zlib/1.3 brotli/1.1.0 zstd/1.5.5 libidn2/2.3.7 libpsl/0.21.2 (+libidn2/2.3.7) libssh/0.10.6/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.59.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.6.7
Platform: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, ubuntu, wayland
OpenGL: AMD, AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (radeonsi, navi14, LLVM 16.0.6, DRM 3.57, 6.8.0-40-generic), 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.1.0
Build Info:
Date: Jul 17 2024 01:36:30
wxWidgets: 3.2.4 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.83.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 8.5.0
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 13.2.0 with C++ ABI 1018
Build settings:
and graphics info
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Navi 14 [Radeon RX 5500/5500M / Pro 5500M] vendor: Gigabyte
driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: RDNA-1 code: Navi-1x process: TSMC n7 (7nm)
built: 2019-20 pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports:
active: DP-3,HDMI-A-1 empty: DP-1,DP-2 bus-ID: 07:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7340
class-ID: 0300
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.0
compositor: gnome-shell v: 46.0 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,radeon,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu
display-ID: 0
API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: amd radeonsi platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi
device: 1 drv: swrast surfaceless: drv: radeonsi wayland: drv: radeonsi x11:
drv: radeonsi inactive: gbm
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa v: 24.1.0 glx-v: 1.4
direct-render: yes renderer: AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (radeonsi navi14 LLVM
16.0.6 DRM 3.57 6.8.0-40-generic) device-ID: 1002:7340 memory: 3.91 GiB
unified: no display-ID: :0.0
API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 layers: 3 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu name: AMD
Radeon RX 5500 XT (RADV NAVI14) driver: N/A device-ID: 1002:7340
surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland device: 1 type: cpu name: llvmpipe (LLVM
17.0.6 256 bits) driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000
surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland
tried x11 and wayland no difference
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